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Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Lately, some perverse comments on June 4th on the
internet and as reported in the Hong Kong
media so sickened me that I tried to find temporary refuge in graceful
classical Chinese poetry. I accidentally stumbled across a moving story about
Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi (白居易) and
would like to share it.

During the time when Bai Juyi was a Qian Tang Jiang (in
Hangzhou) government official (it was the latter part of his officialdom
career), one day he passed by the Green Creek Bridge and saw a crowd gathering before
a Buddhist monk and hearing him talk. He thought it strange that people would
come to such a remote countryside to listen to a monk. The monk must be very
learned, he reckoned. So he rode his horse in the direction of the crowd.

When Bai came face to face with the monk, he said: “Master,
the place where you are seated is quite dangerous.” The Buddhist monk was the
famous Bird’s Nest Monk. Just one glance at Bai, he knew that this man was an arrogant
and conceited elitist. So Bird’s Nest said to him, “It is your position that is
in danger.”

Bai was quite thrown off by this remark and said, “My
position is one that is rooted in the country. How can it be in danger?” The
monk replied, “Worries and pressures alternate with each other and the
conscience is put to an unending test. Neither the body nor the soul can get
any rest. Isn’t that dangerous?”

Then Bai asked Bird’s Nest, “Please tell me, Master, what is
the essence of Buddhism?” Bird’s Nest decided to let him learn a moral lesson:
“Do no evil deed and engage in deeds of kindness.” Bai, who knew a little about
Buddhism, immediately retorted, “I’ve known this for a long time. Not only I
know it, even a three-year old child knows it.”

Seeing Bai disparaging Buddhist teachings, Bird’s Nest said
to him, “A three-year old child may well know the Way. But an eighty-year old
man may no longer have the energy to practice it.”

When Bai heard that, he could read between the lines and
knew that Bird’s Nest was right. He felt ashamed of himself. Then he said to
Bird’s Nest, “You’ve opened my mind. I hope to learn more about Buddhism from
you. One day I will come again to be your follower.” And he left.

Bird’s Nest knew that Bai had a receptive heart towards
Buddhism. But after almost a year, Bai still did not turn up for his lectures.
So one day Bird’s Nest paid a visit to Bai’s residence but found that Bai was
out on an appointment. He took a pen-brush and wrote down this poem for Bai:

You have penned your thoughts
in court for forty years,

In the company of boundless
rights and wrongs.

One household fares
well while thousands more are woebegone;

Half your life brings fame
but invokes gripe in many a netherworld.

筆刀為官四十年

是是非非有萬千

一家飽暖千家怨

半世功名百世冤

When he finished writing the poem, he left Bai’s place.

When Bai came home and saw the poem written on the wall, a strong
sentiment suddenly took hold of him. It dawned on him that all these years he
had always wished to take up Buddhism, but somehow had never got round to doing
it as he was always bogged down by the daily humdrum of administration affairs
and contentions. He was constantly overwhelmed by unending work-related conflicts.
The poem awakened him to his cherished wish and so he decided to quit his job to
become a secular follower of Bird’s Nest’s.

- End
of Story -

Bai Juyi (“白居易”) was one
of the most loved poets from the Tang dynasty because of his integrity and
sense of justice while he held official posts and because of his compassion and
kindheartedness as a human being.

He was known for his interest in the “yuefu” form (“樂府”) of poetry, which was a folk ballad genre from
the Han dynasty, collected or written by the Music Bureau, and was typically
used to convey social grievances. In fact, writing poetry to promote social
progress was explicitly one of his objectives.

Two of his most famous long narrative poems are “The Song of
Everlasting Regret” (“長恨歌”) which
tells the story of Yang Guifei (“楊貴妃”), the
beautiful consort of Tang Emperor Xuanzong (“唐玄宗”),
and “The Song of the Pipa Player” or “Pipa Xing” (“琵琶行”).
(Note: “Pipa” is a four-stringed Chinese musical instrument). I love both these
poems but I am not up to the task of translating these!

When Bai Juyi was sixteen years old, he wrote a poem as a
submission piece in a scholars’ examination, which brought him immediate fame
and honor and later led to a successful career in the officialdom. He could
never have imagined at the time that the poem could remain famous for over a thousand
years after his death.

The poem is called “Farewell on the Ancient Grassland” (賦得古原草送別):-

[The first two characters ‘賦得’
refer to the specific format in which the poem must be written in the exam.]

The Original
(“Farewell on the Ancient Grassland”):

離離原上草,

一歲一枯榮;

野火燒不盡,

春風吹又生;

遼芳侵古道,

晴翠接荒城;

又送王孫去,

萋萋滿別情。

My Translation:-

Yonder sprouts a field
of grass;

One season it dies, in
the next it revives;

Wild fires try in vain
to wipe it out,

Spring breezes bring
it back to life, no doubt.

Its scent wafts from
afar to fill this ancient path,

The lush verdure
stretches to the old town.

Many farewells are
said on this grass,

By royal travelers in
spirit downcast.

The 3rd and 4th lines “野火燒不盡 , 春風吹又生” have become an
often-used adage to give encouragement to the oppressed and the downtrodden
(like grass), bidding them never to give in when faced with adversity and dire
circumstances (like wild fires) in their strife for survival or quest for justice,
as their tenacity and perseverance, as well as help from the heavens (like
spring breezes), will ultimately bring them victory.

In Praise of Su Shi:

Like Bai Juyi and other talented, high-principled and
patriotic Chinese poets, Song dynasty poet Su Shi (aka “Su Tung-po”) (蘇軾) started off an impassioned, full-of-ideals
officialdom career at a young age, only to become totally disillusioned as it
progressed amidst peer jealousy, betrayal and back-stabbing, which led to his
incarceration in mid-life and later to forced exile. Su has been one of my
favorite poets not only for his extraordinary literary and artistic flair but
also for his compassionate, noble and forgiving character.

The Song dynasty was renowned for a less rigid style of
poetry than Tang poems, which includes prose-poems (“fu” “賦”) and lyric poems (“ci” “詞”).

For a literary comparison of Tang poems and Song prose-poems
(“fu” “賦”), here is an excerpt from an
essay by Qian Zhongshu (錢鍾書), written
primarily as a foreword to C. D. Le Gros Clark’s translation work “Su Tung-po’s
Prose-Poems”:-

Chinese poetry, hitherto ethereal
and delicate, seems in the Song dynasty to take on flesh and becomes a solid,
full-blooded thing. It is more weighted with the burden of thought. Of course,
it still looks light and slight enough by the side of Western poetry. But the
lightness of the Song poetry is that of an aeroplane describing graceful
curves, and no longer that of a moth fluttering in the mellow twilight. In the
Song poetry one finds very little of that suggestiveness, that charm of a
beautiful thing imperfectly beheld, which Westerners think characteristic of
Chinese poetry in general. Instead, one meets with a great deal of naked
thinking and outright speaking. It may be called ‘sentimental’ in
contradistinction to the Tang poetry, which is on the whole ‘naïve’, to adopt
Schiller’s useful antithesis. The Song poets, however, make up for their loss
in lisping naivete and lyric glow by a finesse in feeling and observation. In
their descriptive poetry, they have a knack of taking the thing to be described
‘sur le vif’: witness Lu You (陸游) and Yang Wan-li (楊萬里).
They have also a better perception of the nuances of emotion than the Tang
poets, as can be seen particularly in their lyric poems “ci” (“詞”), a species of songs for which the Song dynasty is
justly famous.

Indeed, one of Su Shi’s lyric poems that I particularly
like, 定風波 , is one that describes
superbly the nuances of his feelings when his life was at a low point: at once
vulnerable and courageous, both resigned and resilient, sad but forgiving. The lyric
poem was written shortly after Su got out of jail, where he spent over a
hundred days for having written poems that were disrespectful of the emperor (which
was a fraudulent charge that his peers maliciously laid against him,
deliberately presenting his writings out of context to the emperor). The
incident was called the “Crow Terrace Poetry Trial” (烏臺詩案)
and it happened when Su was forty-three years old.

While in jail, Su got very nervous about his fate, fearing
he might get a death sentence any time, as expressed in several poems that he
wrote to his brother Su Che (蘇徹) and his
wife. Somehow those deeply emotional poems reached the emperor’s hands, and the
latter was so touched that he ordered a pardon for Su Shi. His days of nightmarish
imprisonment profoundly changed his attitude towards life in general, in
particular towards his career as a court official.

Had he not been a big-hearted soul, he would have carried a
big chip on his shoulder and become a bitter person and would have sought
revenge. But, as evident from his lyric poem “定風波”,
he took his ill fate in stride and determined not to let bitterness ruin his
outlook on life. Though he was demoted to a low rank in a poor and remote
district after he was released from jail, he chose not to wallow in self-pity
or nag about the hardship but instead actively sought peace of mind and acceptance
of life just as it was presented, without fear or presumption.

It is the poet’s philosophical aplomb and panache that I
admire most in this lyric poem (“ci” “詞”)
of his.

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About Me

Always fascinated with iconic but unsung females in Chinese history and legends, I cherish a dream of bringing them to the page. Chinese history and poetry, Jin Yong novels, English, French and Russian classics have colored my life and imagination.